Copyright by Belinda Mora García 2012
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Copyright by Belinda Mora García 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Belinda Mora García Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Aeneid of Brazil: Caramuru (1781) Committee: Arturo Arias, Supervisor Naomi Lindstrom Sonia Roncador Jossianna Arroyo Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra The Aeneid of Brazil: Caramuru (1781) by Belinda Mora García, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2012 Dedication To my parents, Elma García Marentes and Armando Rafael Mora Ponce Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have materialized had it not been for the help and support of many people, far too many to name here. When I first decided to write about Caramuru for my master’s thesis, I approached Professors Naomi Lindstrom and the late James Nicolopulos. They have both been fundamental in the writing of this dissertation, each in their own way. Professor Lindstrom kindly supervised my master’s thesis, which involved much work on her part, patiently editing and graciously teaching me about academic writing. Professor Nicolopulos served on my PhD comprehensive exam committee, and taught me about reading texts from the perspective of classical imitation. Thus, the first chapter of this dissertation would not have been possible without his vast knowledge of the forms of Latin American colonial texts. I am also very grateful to Dr. Bruce Louden at the University of Texas at El Paso. I never would have been able to recognize the plot of the Aeneid in Caramuru had it not been for his excellent class on Greco-Roman literature, which I took in 1999. Thanks also to Dr. Louden for reading the first chapter. I am most grateful to Professor Ivan Teixeira of the University of São Paulo, who taught me about Colonial Brazilian Literature and closely read and commented several chapters of this dissertation. I am especially grateful to Professor Arturo Arias for taking on my dissertation when I was left without a supervisor. His input on Latin American postcolonial discourse has been most helpful. Professor Arias has brought this dissertation to its final stages, and for this I am eternally grateful. I also want to extend thanks to Professors Sonia Roncador, Jossianna Arroyo, and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra for participating on my committee. Thank you Professor Arroyo for volunteering to take the place of Professor Nicolopulos, I am sure he thanks you too! Thanks also to Dr. Kelly McDonough for reading and giving me feedback on the final chapter of this dissertation. I want to thank all my friends and family, especially Nancy LaGreca, Walter Leite, Flavia Leite, Megan Scarborough, Patricia Nuñez, Simali Suthar and my colleagues who have been constant sources of support and love throughout my many years of graduate school. Thanks to my parents for their unconditional love, and to all my aunts, uncles, and cousins, whom I love very much. God bless you all, always. v The Aeneid of Brazil: Caramuru (1781) Belinda Mora García, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Arturo Arias This dissertation concerns the epic poem Caramuru (1781) by José de Santa Rita Durão. I propose both a post-nationalist or postcolonial reading of Caramuru, as well as a pre- nationalist or historical analysis. The first part of this dissertation focuses on the form itself, particularly the genre of epic poetry to which Caramuru belongs. The title of this dissertation references Virgil’s Aeneid, while the comparisons between this and other epics focus on the conventions of epic poetry, placing Caramuru within the context of other epic poems. Traditionally, and even recently, Caramuru has consistently been compared to Luis de Camões’ Os Lusíadas. I have tried to establish a closer connection with Virgil’s Aeneid, rather than Os Lusíadas, as the model epic for Caramuru. Chapter One focuses on the topic of imitation, specifically the many similarities with the plot of Virgil’s Aeneid. Chapter Two offers a historiographical approach to how the readings of colonial texts changed over time, including a historical background of Caramuru, which was written soon after the fall of the so-called enlightened despotism of Portugal under the Marques de Pombal. The second part of this dissertation is a close reading of the text itself, and focuses on the colonial discourse present in the poem. Chapter Three is an analysis of the religious discourse in Caramuru, which reflects the preoccupations of an Augustinian monk living in the Age of Enlightenment. Chapter Four concerns the representations of Amerindian resistance in the poem, particularly of two characters who belong to the insubordinate Caeté tribe. The last chapter focuses on the issue of gender and how women are represented in Caramuru. The main woman protagonist is a Tupinambá woman who becomes a prototype for Iracema, a well-known fictional character from nineteenth-century Brazil. Santa Rita Durão was born in Brazil but lived most of his adult life in Portugal, plus 15 years in Italy. He wrote that the motivation to write this poem was his ‘love of homeland’ or nationalist sentiment, even though the nation of Brazil was yet to exist at the time he wrote Caramuru. vi Table of Contents Introduction The Aeneid of Brazil ................................................................................... 1 A Brief Background and Summary of Caramuru .................................... 8 Caramuru and the Epic Tradition ........................................................... 21 Chapter One A Virgilian Epic: Imitation in Caramuru ................................................. 33 Toward a Theory of Imitation ................................................................ 39 The Aeneid and Caramuru ..................................................................... 50 Empires and Epics ………..................................................................... 73 Chapter Two History and Poetry in Portuguese America .............................................. 76 The Portuguese Viradeira (1777-1808) and Caramuru ……...……...... 99 Chapter Three Holy Wars: The Spiritual Conquest in Caramuru …........…................117 From Caminha’s Carta to Vieira’s Sermões (1500-1700) .................. 120 Religious and Colonial Discourse in Caramuru ................................. 134 Chapter Four Jararaca’s Revenge: European Imperialism and Amerindian Resistance.160 Other Representations of Resistance: Caliban in Caramuru ……...… 186 Chapter Five Surviving the Genocide: Amerindian Women of the Conquest ...……...208 Iracema and Other Anagrams for America .......................................... 209 Representations of Indigenous Women in Caramuru .......................... 221 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 252 Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 265 vii INTRODUCTION The Aeneid of Brazil In 1841, Andres Bello published an article in which he stated that Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana (1569, 1578, 1589) was the so-called Aeneid (29-19 BC) of Chile. Similarly, the title of this dissertation suggests that we might consider Santa Rita Durão’s Caramuru (1781) the Aeneid of Brazil. Indeed, Caramuru illustrates familiar encounters between Amerindians and Europeans that we could imagine as a foundational epic poem for the Americas. While Andres Bello observed that Chile is the only modern country whose foundation was immortalized by an epic poem, a closer study of colonial Iberian poetry reveals other epics. There are at least three epic poems that narrate the foundations of what is today the nation of Brazil: José de Anchieta’s De Gestis Mendi de Sàa (1563), Bento Teixeira’a Prosopopéia (1601), and Santa Rita Durão’s Caramuru. All these poems in commemorate, in one way or another, the establishment of what would eventually become Brazil. If we compare the plots of La Araucana as the Aeneid of Virgil we find that Bello’s description was meant in a general sense, the Aeneid to serve as a metaphor of foundation story or epic. This comparison between the actual poems, the Aeneid and La Araucana, reveals that Bello was speaking in much broader terms, with little or no reference to the Latin concept of imitation. With the independence of Chile in 1810, the new nation needed a foundational myth. Like many other Latin American nations, the nineteenth-century was dedicated to nation-building. Given the recent independence from 1 Spain, one could imagine that if Bello had chosen to compare La Araucana to Spain’s national epic the Cantar de mío Cid (1140) instead of the Aeneid, perhaps the nationalist fervor of nineteenth-century would have frowned upon this. Perhaps Bello deliberately chose the parallel between the Aeneid and La Araucana in order to give the founding myth more prestige, since the model epic was written in Latin, not Spanish. More likely is the possibility that Bello’s newly adopted founding epic needed to project the nationalist sentiment of his era. Had he stated that “La Araucana is the Cantar de mío Cid of Chile” this spirit of nascent patriotism would be somewhat thwarted, since the ties to imperial Spain were still very recent. One can only speculate how this comparison of La Araucana with the Spanish national epic would have